


a land flowing with milk and honey

by tomato_greens



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Multi, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 16:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13150299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: After Reprocessing Eric was assigned to the new capital in the north, a very important position.





	a land flowing with milk and honey

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive me: this fic is not from the viewpoint of a woman. A potential soundtrack. I don’t think it’s any more violent than canon (this is based on the novel as I have only seen a couple episodes of the TV adaptation), but that isn’t saying much. The only rape is implied due to the worldbuilding; it does not take place on screen.

“Would you take Ofjack to the doctor?” Mrs. Zimmermann asked, leaning her head out into the hall, where Eric was polishing the Commander’s shoes. “She’s not been well for a week, and we have the Ceremony tomorrow.”

“Yes, of course,” Eric agreed at once. 

“Whenever you’re finished with the shoes. You know that Ofjack can wait,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, who was perhaps five or six years older than Eric but who had already developed little crow’s feet at each eye.

“This will just take me a minute,” Eric said, swallowing his still-reflexive _hon_. One didn’t use endearments with a Handmaid, and Eric, too low for a woman of his own, was no longer expected to use them at all. He noticed Mrs. Zimmermann had one hand on Ofjack’s shoulder, white-knuckled with concern. Well, if it was that bad, they had better go. “Ready?” Eric said, putting aside the shoe polish and the stiff black brush.

Ofjack lowered her head in agreement, demure, as she tied on her white wings. 

“Be good,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, ushering Ofjack out with Eric to the black car. “Tell me exactly what the doctor says.”

“Yes, Mrs. Zimmermann,” said Ofjack, and buckled herself in.

The drive to the doctor was was uneventful. They passed the wall. There were two new rough bundles hanging from it. He glanced back in the rear view mirror, but Ofjack’s face was impassive, as it usually was. Her hands folded neatly in her lap, she was dwarfed by the leather seat; she was so small Eric sometimes doubted whether she would be able to carry a child to term, if she could catch the Commander’s seed at all.

He knew the process, obviously, at least in theory. He’d still been unsexed and quaking the year before the new Republic was established, when he learned in a series of dispassionate diagrams projected on a cinderblock classroom wall by his junior year P.E. teacher, Ms. Williamson. The whole class tittered about her short hair, her almost gelatinous breasts squashed beneath sports bra and short-sleeved polo, the clearly delusional gold crucifix she wore, which Bitty had always found gauche; he’d been raised Southern Baptist, before. There was an official phrase for it now, _gender traitor_ , but back then the class had savored the deliciously taboo. _Lesbo. Dyke. Butch._ Yet even after the agricultural Colony was set up in former Alabama (not that Eric was supposed to remember Alabama; he often thought it would be easier for the children born now, or those young enough to avoid Reprocessing), Ms. Williamson had remained part of the community, steel-eyed and devout. After Reprocessing Eric had been assigned to the new capital in the north, a very important position, but he’d found out from his parents before the phone lines were shut down that Ms. Williamson had been recruited by the Republic, probably as an Aunt, go figure. Oh, that was something else no one said anymore. All was as it would be under His eye.

Sometimes Eric wondered whether Ofjack had been a gender traitor. It was something he wondered about most people, though you were supposed to be able to tell. She gave no sign of it, moving noiseless about the house, her red skirts a diaphanous whisper around her small form. Eric had never known an Asian person growing up, but he’d heard the women were supposed to be like that, quiet, respectful. In a model home like Commander Zimmermann’s, all the women were as they should be: Ofjack was so silent that an exhale felt like a speech, but Caitlin, the Martha, also kept her eyes downcast and her voice a low hum. Sometimes Eric waited in the kitchen to watch her bake when there was sugar to be had, technically an impiety, although so far no one had caught them at it. No one but Ofjack, who’d smiled crookedly run a finger through the flour before climbing back to her room, but she hardly counted. The Commander’s wife was a little more lively, leaving her shoes in a heap in the downstairs closet as she narrated a bubbly aside to the Martha or to Eric, but she never interrupted the Commander in his study, never demanded more of Eric than was appropriate to his position as her subordinate. A nice woman, Mrs. Zimmermann. Sometimes he overheard the Commander say her name in his rough, faintly accented burr—“Camilla, could you get my pills, please?”—and he was always startled to realize he’d forgotten it again. 

“Here,” he said, pulling into the drive in front of the big sterile office. “We’re here,” he said again when Ofjack didn’t move, then got out and opened the door for her. He’d thought she wasn’t into that sort of thing; the last Handmaid had hated it. But apparently if you met one you hadn’t met them all. 

“Oh,” said Ofjack, blinking, and climbed out. She held her back very straight as she entered the building. Eric brought the car around the side of the building, to the parking lot. Marthas and Handmaids weren’t allowed near so many cars, in case they got ideas. He’d never been a reader but sometimes he missed the romance novels his mother used to leave stashed in his father’s glove compartment, though of course those had stopped being published for nearly a year before they were officially banned. He could get out of the car, spend five minutes shooting the shit with the Waterfords’ driver, or the Bakers’. He was pretty sure the Waterfords’ driver—Mick? Rick? Nick?—was an Eye, which meant he should try and curry favor with him, get a leg up, but he felt suddenly exhausted and leaned back into his headrest instead. The problem with Ofjack was that she lacked sensuality, he decided. Too bad. Eric sometimes thought about what it would be like, to be a Handmaid, hips swaying under the weight of maternal responsibility, cocooned by the red cloak and the white wings, one step out of the world. He’d never seen the Ceremony in full but it wasn’t hard to imagine, the Commander’s hips snapping forward with military precision, Ofjack and Mrs. Zimmermann jerking with the force of his thrusts. Commander Zimmermann was better looking, younger, than many of the other Commanders, and a prescribed fuck a month didn’t seem so bad. Eric knew Ofjack got baths, for example. He hadn’t seen a full bathtub since he was seventeen, soaking out the ache at the end of the hockey season. 

Thank God, Eric often mused, that he’d given up figure skating when he did. 

On occasion, when he was waiting in the empty interstices between Mrs. Zimmermann’s appointments or more rarely toting Ofjack somewhere Mrs. Zimmermann thought she should go, he’d get hard. Out of nowhere and about nothing, as though his dick simply missed being noticed: an erection, not exactly unwelcome, but useless; there was nowhere to put it. In Ms. Williamson’s classroom the students had thrown around a lot of rumors, an abortion here—forbidden word, forbidden word, but it was before the fertility crisis was widespread knowledge—and a girl who DP’d there. Apparently a boy the year above Eric’s had gotten one of his own ribs removed so that he could blow himself better, or maybe it was the boy’s dad. Eric wondered, now, seatbelt still confining him, what that might feel like, the doubled sensation of sucking his own cock, whether he’d still like it when he pressed into the slit the way he’d liked it when he pressed a finger there in the shower of his parents’ bathroom. Waste not, want not, they’d told him, but sometimes he still wanted despite himself: nameless things, washes of sensation rather than illicit scenarios clad in leather chaps or something equally tasteless. 

The tracker set into the dashboard beeped. Ofjack’s appointment had finished with her. 

Eric took the car back around to the front of the building, where Ofjack stood with her hands hidden neatly in her sleeves. He found himself hoping she would open the doors of her own accord for once in her life, but she just stood there looking at the car, so he hopped out and gestured to the backseat as emphatically as he dared. 

“Thank you,” said Ofjack, apparently missing the high drama of his wrist-heavy gesticulation, and buckled in again.

The ride home was easy, again; fewer cars on the streets, now, presumably because of the sanctions he’d heard the Commander mention once or twice—valuable information he wasn’t supposed to know, though he didn’t know what price it would get or even where to bring it if he wanted to sell it. Maybe Ofjack knew, a revolution in her silences, but how would he ask? No. Better to sit on it, throw a hint in Nick/Rick/Mick’s direction and see if he bit. He’d heard that the Eyes got a week’s leave if they turned in leaks. He could see his parents, maybe, if he could find their new address. Their letters had stopped after the Mason-Dixon Evacuation, when only the Commanders’ correspondence were being prioritized; now that the mail trucks were moving again, he simply needed an authorization stamp and that address.

“Thank you,” Ofjack repeated, “under His eye,” and this time let herself out almost before he’d parked the car, running up the stairs without looking at him once. Well, that’s as it was; the Lord open or closed, Eric simply could not figure that girl out.

He checked the car’s oil and brakes, recorded the day’s gas usage in the logbook, then headed inside to finish polishing the Commander’s boots. He wondered if the Zimmermanns’ Martha might have fruit hidden away for him, as she sometimes did, or if she’d make a pie anytime soon. The Bakers’ driver swore their Martha had found some cinnamon; he could see where they had extras, plan a trade. There were no oranges, since Ofjack hadn’t gone to market, but the Martha seemed pleased about the prospect of real cinnamon, and the potatoes in the stew were fresh enough it hardly felt like the other vegetables were rehydrated. 

“My pleasure,” said the Martha when Eric thanked her, and patted him on the shoulder in a perfunctory way before her eyes widened comically and she removed her hand. “Apologies,” she said, so obviously grim that it was no hardship for Eric to wave off her concern. 

“I know you weren’t _trying_ to lead me into sin,” he said, laughing, and after she chuckled weakly back to him, he returned to his apartment above the garage, alone as he always was. 

The apartment was a sparse little thing, a plain pedestal sink beside a plain metal bedframe, his boots neatly beside the door, but Eric had done what he could to liven the place up: white curtains Mrs. Zimmermann had been looking to dispose of, a saucer of orange peel and dried up lily petals he’d swiped from the Zimmermanns’ kitchen counter a few days ago. It made the room smell musty-sweet like his mother’s lingerie drawer, something arcane, rotting in the feminine. He would be required tomorrow night for the Ceremony, the Commander’s household spread out before him, but for tonight, he was done; he had no more use. 

He sat on the bed and looked over at the well-used Bible on his nightstand, its spine creased from his two favorite chapters. _Song of Songs_ was an embarrassing preference, but common enough; who, a man alone, wouldn’t revisit _My beloved is mine, and I am his?_ And no one could fault a man in his position for _Samuel_ ; who, a man below, did not long to become a David for a Jonathan? During his childhood, his family had kept an illustrated ESV in the front room on a gold-tinted wooden stand, mostly because Aunt Judy had gifted them the thing in the first place and his mother refused to back down from a game of chicken. As a child, Eric would reach up and run his fingers over the book’s rough edges, or tug open the heavy cover and and peek at the bright, fantastical images. He still remembered the picture of David and Jonathan’s embrace, their blond and dark curls tangled together in their covenant, though the verse was different in the Gilead State Bible; the GSB stated, unadorned, that _Jonathan bound David in close friendship, for he respected him as he respected his own soul._

There was a rapid fire knock on the door. Eric patted his hair back into place and rushed over—what could Mrs. Zimmermann need at this hour? 

But it wasn’t Mrs. Zimmermann at all; it was the Commander. He was a tall man, much taller than Eric, and young enough that his black hair had only just begun to gray at the temples. He was wearing his usual dark uniform with its rows of colorful insignia, unreadable to Eric but impressive all the same; surely, Eric thought, Commander Zimmermann had done something very brave to deserve such decoration. 

“Hello,” said the Commander.

“Hello,” said Eric.

“May I come in?” said the Commander.

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Eric, flustered, and waved him on.

They stood looking at each other. Eric stifled the urge to rest a hand on his hip, or tap his foot; he looked straight into the Commander’s eyes, instead, as he had been taught to do. Men must be respectful but they must not be weak, even those of a lower class to their superiors; they must be forthright without being tactless; they must be dangerous to dissenters and kind to the meek; they must shake hands firmly and meet each other’s eyes, to build honest rapport. 

The Commander’s eyes were ice blue, startlingly so, and his pupils seemed dilated in the dim light of Eric’s apartment. He slid his gaze out of Eric’s and took in the bed, the boots, the Bible, then lingering on the dish of orange peel. “Looks like the place I lived in college,” the Commander said, smiling a little, awkward. His shoulders were very broad, Eric noted; muscular. “Much neater, though.”

“I try,” Eric said, swallowing a horrible little giggle that threatened to erupt. “Grew up with a housecleaner, I like to keep things tidy.”

“Isn’t it wonderful,” the Commander said. He looked at the orange peel again, then back to Eric. “You keep a wonderful home, I mean.”

Eric felt his face redden slightly. “My mother always told me cleanliness was next to godliness.”

“Clean living,” said the Commander. “Yes.”

“Under His eye,” Eric agreed, for lack of a better response. 

“May the Lord open,” the Commander intoned, then turned his speculative gaze back to Eric. He took a step closer. “Eric,” he said, again, and reached out a hand before dropping it back to his hip. “I’ve been wondering—if you—”\

“Sir,” said Eric uncertainly.

“If you,” said the Commander again, but a dying-horse shriek interrupted him, and they stared at each other for a moment as the scream continued before they both rushed for the door, down the stairs, across the driveway, up the house’s back staircase, and then up two sets of stairs to see the Martha in her dull green dress yelling her head off. 

“What’s gotten into you,” said the Commander, roughly, grabbing hold of her shoulder as Eric pushed past her into the room, which he saw must be Ofjack’s; the closet door was ajar, red dresses and a red winter cloak visible through the crack. He didn’t understand, right away, why the Martha had been screaming, until he tried to take a step back and realized his shoe was tacky with blood.

“Oh my God,” he said, then, because the room suddenly resolved in front of him: Ofjack’s face as serene as it ever had been, still and gray in what he immediately understood was death. She was on the white bed linens in a pool of her own brackish blood, which had poured from her forearms and from her own throat. She’d arranged herself almost artistically, her arms outstretched, a sharp-edged metal piece—part of a scalpel?—neatly on the floor under one of her hands. 

“What’s this,” snapped Mrs. Zimmermann, behind him, and Eric turned to see her already in a dressing gown but her hair still done in its usual arranged waves. “What’s this!” she repeated, and came into the room beside Eric, taking in Ofjack’s prone body and then what he had not: the GSB perched on her stomach, open, a passage underlined in her own red-black lifeblood. Mrs. Zimmermann snatched up the book, her hands tight on its binding, clearly ready to shred it or burn it—something; anything. 

“Camilla,” said the Commander, “the Lord’s word shall not be cast away in vain.”

Mrs. Zimmermann whipped around to look at him, her eyes narrow and venomous, before she visibly steadied herself. “Someone must call the authorities,” she said, and put the book back down on the table beside the door. Stiff with blood, it opened itself again to the offending page as she stalked past Eric and jerked her chin at the Martha, who lowered her head and obediently followed.

Eric wanted to leave, too, but he had not been dismissed; the Commander was still staring at Ofjack, his face very blank. Eric looked back down at the GSB, at Ofjack’s last will and testament. Oh; Matthew; the Sermon on the Mount.

_Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied._

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year


End file.
